Invincible Season 2 Episode 5 recap: Game over

Invincible Season 2 Episode 5 follows Mark back to Earth after his near-death brawl with the Viltrumites – and he faces off against a familiar threat.

The first half of Invincible’s second season closed in bloody, shocking style (par for the course at this point): Mark was duped into a days-long journey through the stars to Thraxa, a distant world home to bug-like aliens supposedly at risk of obliteration from a meteor shower.

There weren’t any meteors, but Mark was needed for another problem: Nolan became the planet’s emperor, and after ditching Earth in the wake of their fight, he needs his help with the inevitable Viltrumite threat – oh, and he also had another child.

As expected, three soldiers arrived and duked it out with the father-son duo, eventually breaking Nolan’s back and leaving Mark with an impossible task: continuing his dad’s mission to prepare Earth for the empire’s rule. Spoilers to follow…

Invincible Season 2 Episode 5 picks up where we left off

We open on Mark’s blood trickling out onto Thraxa’s ash-covered ground. He’s battered, bruised, and appalled by the state of the planet; fires blaze as Thraxan blood drips from smoking rubble and people cry out in agony. He passes out, but he’s recovered by two people who take him to see the empress.

“Where’s Nolan?” Andressa asks, and Mark reveals he was taken by the Viltrumites. “This city, these people… it’s all our fault,” he says, but Andressa tells him he saved her life, as well as his brother’s, and if they hadn’t been there, many more would have been killed. “Thraxan lives are short compared to yours, our culture doesn’t assign blame. We only look forward… we will rebuild Mark, count on that,” she adds.

We cut ahead, with Mark carrying an enormous pillar; the city has been restored, but the shadow of the past still looms over him. Nuolzot (now an incredibly elderly bug) tells him they’ve completed building a ship that will take him home, but Mark is keen to stick around and help some more. “Your people must need your strength,” he says, but Mark responds: “There’s tons of heroes on Earth, I’m sure they’ve got it covered.”

Not quite. We then see a huge, monstrous villain standing over the Guardians. “Behold the might of Omnipotus, tremble before my unlimited power,” he yells, and the Immortal replies: “No.”

Nuolzot isn’t the only one looking a fair bit older: Andressa is nearing the end of her life. Mark insists he’s pleased about the ship and that he wants to see Amber and his mom, but he also wants to stick around. “You’ve done enough… it’s time you return home. But there is something else I must ask of you: take your brother with you home to Earth,” she says. Soon, she’ll die, and she doesn’t want him to deal with a cycle of constant death. “Generations will pass before he’s even an adult… what mother would abandon him to a life like that?” she explains, and Mark remembers his dad saying something similar.

“I just keep hoping my dad’s okay,” he says. “I hope that too, but if he lives, he’ll go searching for you, not me. My time with Nolan was special, but he will know my life has run its course,” she replies, before bidding farewell to her little boy.

Mark goes home

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Back on Earth, Debbie has returned to work. She’s driven home by Paul, who gives her a bottle of wine before she goes inside. “We all know how hard it’s been for you, but it’s good to have you back,” he says, before giving her a hug. As she walks into the kitchen, she opens the glass cupboard – but she doesn’t need alcohol to cope anymore.

Well, in that moment at least, because Mark soon appears after two months in another galaxy – and, as per Andressa’s wishes, he’s brought his brother with him. “Who is that?” Debbie asks, before we see her holding a glass of wine. She doesn’t know how to respond to the news. “I don’t even have the words. This morning, I didn’t even know if Nolan was alive. I didn’t even know if I wanted him to be alive. Now he’s left another planet in ruins and his new kid is sitting in my kitchen… he’s never on the hook for lives he destroys, he just leaves it for everyone else to clean up, again and again,” she says.

Mark explains that he won’t be a toddler for long, but maybe he could take a year off from college to look after him. Debbie strongly rejects the idea, but as he points out, he’s barely been attending classes anyway. Debbie suggests Cecil, but Mark says they can’t rely on him like that. “He’s my brother, I can’t just abandon him,” he says. Debbie tells him she’ll take some time off work and try to figure out a better plan.

At GDA HQ, Donald asks to talk to Cecil. He tries to swat him away, and Donald loses his cool. “Everybody out,” he shouts, and soon he’s alone with Cecil. He wants to know why he has metal and wiring underneath his skin. “With respect sir, what did you do to me?” he asks.

Cecil takes him to a White Room (a secret lab, basically). There, he’s shown an advanced, state-of-the-art, “expensive-as-hell” robot. Cecil tells him he was lucky after his thought-to-be-fatal encounter with Omni-Man. “Your brain was still intact… the rest of you, not so much,” he recalls. “You’re you, but better, stronger, alive.” As for the PTSD, Cecil made sure it wouldn’t affect Donald in his new form, so he scrubbed his memories.

Mark goes back to his dorm to see William, who tells him he needs to go see the dean about being put on academic probation. First, he wants to reunite with Amber – but Cecil appears in front of him, angry about Mark constantly refusing to take orders, as promised. “I saved millions of lives out there Cecil, and it looks like everything here was just fine,” Mark says – but that’s not totally correct. The Guardians were nearly massacred by Omnipotus, and Black Samson has discovered that Shapesmith is actually a Martian.

“What I found was important… you already know, don’t you?” Mark says, and Cecil admits to monitoring Debbie, and “certain keywords” trigger a closer listen. Cecil also insists that the GDA should be looking after the baby, as he’s an alien and they’re more qualified. “Fine, I’m sure your mom will love looking after her ex-husband’s new kid,” he says, before vanishing.

The Sequids are coming

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Mark goes to see Amber, who’s hanging out with her college friends. “Wow, so he is real. I thought Amber was just trying to brush off creepy dudes,” Bridget says, before they leave the room to give them some privacy. Mark walks Amber through everything that happened, before realizing that all he’s done is talk about himself. Amber says college “is no joke” and she recently failed a test worth a third of her grade. Her grandpa also died, but she “got through it… people asked where you were. Having to lie about it wasn’t awesome.”

Amber urges that she knew what she was signing onto when they got together, and she’s still glad he’s back.

Back at the GDA, Donald drifts off into a frightening daydream where he’s strangled by his own robot. He’s awoken by a member of staff who says he needs to see something on their long-range scans. As the Guardians train, Rudy tells the Immortal he should be more careful about forcing Amanda to transform into Monster Girl so much, a suggestion she doesn’t take kindly. Before there’s any more drama, Cecil arrives to tell them about an alien shipped coming from Mars “packed to the gills with bio-matter.”

Shapesmith then confesses that he’s a Martian – but it turns out it’s not much of a secret. Cecil and everyone else already knew, but they still don’t know why he’s on Earth. He explains that he was born on Mars, where they used Sequids as servants, because they’re unable to penetrate Martian skin. When astronauts arrived on Mars in Season 1, he took his chance to see the stars… so he knocked Russ Livingston over the head and assumed his form, leaving him to become the “possessed host for the singular and terrifying Sequid hive mind.”

If they’re going to beat the Sequids, they’re going to need help: Atom Eve, who’s back at home living her life as an ordinary young woman. She finds Rex in her room, who promises he’s not there to “get in her pants” – but she’s not in a good place. She’s worried about hurting people every time she tries to help. “Everybody f**ks up, to f**k up is human… Shakespeare said that,” he says, telling her how she’s saved so many people made “this sh*tty world a little bit better.” Also, the couple who nearly died in Episode 4 are going to make a full recovery.

Invincible reunites with Eve

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Back at home, Debbie is trying to feed the baby, but he doesn’t like any Earth food so far. He asks for Nolan’s old stuff, but she says she gave it away because she couldn’t live in “limbo” while he was gone. Mark says Nolan told him to find his books, as they may hold a clue to defeating the Viltrumites.

Cecil appears to tell Mark to go to space again. “Think of this as your redemption tour,” he says. As Mark gets ready, he asks Debbie to consider accepting his help with the baby, even if it’s just a trained caretaker for the house.

That evening, Mark reunites with Eve aboard the Guardians spaceship, while Rex stays at HQ with Shrinking Rae and Dupli-Kate. “Like there’s gonna be two huge world-shattering emergencies at the same time… I’d like to see that Rae,” Rex jokes – but there is a big threat: the Lizard League. They start killing guards quickly and mercilessly, but Rex and co. jump into action.

On the ship, Mark tells Eve about his dad while the Guardians figure out how to approach the Martian warship. Moments later, their shuttle is blown to pieces, leaving them stranded in space inside one of Eve’s energy bubbles – and they only have 10 minutes of air. Fortunately, Eve is able to get them on board – but when Bulletproof punches a Sequid, the hive mind is quickly alerted to their presence, and they start flooding the room. Robot is able to disrupt their nervous systems with a high-pitched noise, giving an Eve an opportunity to gather everyone under a shield.

Meanwhile, Earth’s remaining Guardians struggle against the Lizard League. Kate is brutally murdered by Komodo Dragon, who then swallows Rae. “Hey idiot, she doesn’t stay small,” Rex tells him, but in a devastating rebuttal to the ‘Thanus’ theory, it doesn’t work: she returns to her normal size, but he manages to crumple her under his skin. “Yum,” he says, before they corner Rex. Komodo bites off his hand… but he happens to be holding an explosive, which causes his head to blow up. King Lizard then holds a gun to his head. “Just do it you pr*ck,” Rex says, but the scene cuts away before he pulls the trigger.

While Rudy builds an amplifier, Invincible and the Immortal try to fend off the Sequids as best as they can. Eve is unable to maintain her shield, and it eventually shatters, leaving them defenseless against millions of aliens. The episode cuts to the credits as they’re surrounded.

But that’s not all: in the post-credits scene, Allen wakes up! He’s still in his incubator, but he’s very much alive – and he’s bigger than ever. Thaedus admits that he turned off his life support machine, but it was for the greater good. “I knew without it, you would either die or recover stronger than before. I’m sorry I gambled with your life, but it has paid off. You may now be able to stand your ground against a Viltrumite,” he explains. “I appreciate your vote of confidence, but I’m not gonna ask for a rematch anytime soon,” Allen replies.

Thaedus reveals his true nature: he’s a Viltrumite who rebelled against the empire. “I need you to go back to Earth and bring Invincible here. He is the key to turning the tide of this war,” he says.

Invincible Season 2 Episodes 1-5 are streaming on Prime Video now. You can also read our review of all of Part 2, and check out our guide to the show’s full cast, as well as the remaining release schedule. You can also find out what other TV shows you should stream in March.